With increasing scientific awareness of the positive correlation between aerobic exercise and overall general health (over and above mere physical conditioning), there has been a corresponding increase in the public's awareness of these benefits and a desire to integrate such exercise into their daily routine. Because the average working person enjoys most of his or her leisure time in the evening hours, this is consequently the most convenient time for most people to exercise. There exists, however, general safety concerns about exercising out of doors after dark, and also about exercising in inclement weather. In response to these concerns, several types of indoor exercise devices have been developed, such as stationary bicycles, stair machines and treadmills. Consumer demand for such devices continues to be very strong, as new people continue to make the commitment to incorporate exercise into their lifestyles.
The reality of such an indoor exercise routine, however, frequently falls far short of most people's expectations. In the attempt to remove the negative elements of outdoor exercise, most of the positive elements have been removed as well. Consequently, without the stimulus of varying scenery, a sense of motion and a need to concentrate on one's surroundings in order to avoid obstacles, most people find continued indoor exercise to be laborious, unfulfilling, tedious and unbearably dull. Because there is nothing "to do" while using such stationary exercise equipment, most people begin to use them less and less frequently, until they become just another place to hang clothes to dry alter washing.
In order to counteract this effect, there have been many attempts in the prior art to provide external stimuli to the user of such stationary exercise equipment. The most successful of these attempts involves coupling the controls of a video game to the exercise equipment so that the user may play the video game while exercising. This has been found to provide the missing external stimuli that are necessary to prevent the exercise routine from becoming monotonous and boring.
Unfortunately, most such prior art video game controllers are designed for one particular piece of exercise equipment and incorporate sensors to detect when particular pieces of the equipment, such as the handlebars of a stationary nt controller for each piece of equipment, such as a bicycle, stair machine or treadmill. Not only does this increase the cost of designing and producing such controllers because they are built in lower volume, but the consumer is required to pay for a video game controller for each piece of exercise equipment he buys. Furthermore, because such controllers operate by sensing the movement of some piece of the exercise equipment, it is not possible to use any of them as a universal controller which can be retrofit to a large number of exercise devices manufactured by various companies.
There is therefore a need for a device which provides a controller between a piece of exercise equipment and a video game, such that the controller may be used with many different exercise equipment designs or be used as a retrofit controller for existing exercise equipment. Additionally, there is a need for a controller that is ergonomically designed so that the use of the controller is intuitive to the user. The present invention is directed toward meeting these needs.